Yes; the sort of socio-cultural "baggage" that any popularized scientific theory seems to accumulate today, be it Darwinian evolution or a variant of creationist theory, which Yaya-style Muslim creationism clearly is. (And Heaven knows that global Islam is a socio-cultural phenomenon, especially in its recently-revised virulently aggressive form....)
Having said that, I say: If you want to talk about SCIENCE, then you have to look directly at the theoretical ideas themselves. That's where the science is, if there is any — it's not to be found in the theory's popularizers.
And having said that, I found the missing book I mentioned in my last! And so I'd like to reference Yaya's article in order to demonstrate what I mean by that last statement.
The article is Chapter 15: Did Life on Earth Begin Suddenly and in Complex Forms?
By way of overview: Yaya has the irritating habit of citing scientists against scientists. He also has a way of separating evolutionary theory from paleontology. His critics tend to say he is an unprincipled quote-miner, taking people out of context in order to make a case of which they would disapprove.
But is this "quote-mining?":
If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed.... Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains. [Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 146]Doesn't look like a mined quote to me. These look like the statements of a scientist of integrity, honestly disclosing potential problems with his theory, and proposing directions for further research that could resolve them....Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?... But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?... Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. [Ibid., p. 140, 141, 227]
And so what does Yaya do? He brings in a raft of paleontologists to shed light on any correspondences that might exist between Darwin's theory and the current state of paleontology:
Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so. — Edmund R. Leach, Rethinking Anthropology, 1981, p. 19These look like interesting issues to me. BTW, I really do not "have a [scientific theoretical] dog in this fight." As far as I'm concerned, evolution theory still deals with very open questions. I'm not gonna bet on a dog in a dog race....Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. — David B. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolution Theory," Evolution, Sept. 1974, 28:467
Although an almost incomprehensible number of species inhabit Earth today, they do not form a continuous spectrum of barely distinguishable intermediates. Instead, nearly all species can be recognized as belonging to a relatively limited number of clearly distinct major groups. — Robert L. Carroll, Patterns and Processes of Invertebrate Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 9.1997, p. 9.
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: (1) Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. (2) Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and "fully formed." — Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History Vol. 86, 1977, p. 14
...[T]he Cambrian strata of rocks ... are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. — Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, London: W. W. Norton, 1987, p. 229. [Yaha's emphasis]
And so, I find this observation deeply troubling:
Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome ... brings terrible distress.... They may get a little bigger or bumpier. But they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection or gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, it's not evolution so you don't talk about it. — Stephen Jay Gould, Lecture at Hobart and William Smith College, 1980.Well, that would be "just a start" of the list of critical questions that this crazy Muslim, Harun Yaya, has managed to compile. They look pretty serious to me. FWIW.
I am not an endorser or supporter of Harun Yaya or the cultural context in which he arises. I just think he raises some very interesting problems — which happen to be inconvenient to "doctrinal" Darwinism....
Is that a question about evolution, or a question about geology? If we're accepting that not finding all of the transitionals in the fossil record means they never existed, does only being able to find one of a particulary species mean that's all there ever was?
There's an implicit assertion in his arguments that there must be fossilized remains of every species there ever was. Geological theory does not support that as being a reasonable assumption.